How to Pray // Yield: Confession and Reconciliation

Bible reading // Acts 2:22-23, 36-39

the journey so far… P R A … Y

Well I hope you’ve been enjoying our teaching series on prayer so far, we’ve had some brilliant talks over the last few weeks, from Phil Jack last week, brilliant from Jamie the week before too, and Karen the week before that! Do check them out if you’ve missed them.

And today we get the the first of three talks on the ‘Y’ of PRAY, can you remember what the letters stand for…? Join in at home… P.R.A.Y.

Pause

Rejoice

Ask

Yield - Confession and Reconciliation

Yield: Confession & Reconciliation

Confession - that’s the ‘Forgive us our sins’ bit...

Reconciliation - that’s about the ‘as we forgive those who sin against us’ bit...

We live in a world that seems to be in more of a mess than ever before… just last week we had a time of confessional prayer after Phil’s talk, getting on our knees and asking for God’s forgiveness and mercy as a whole nation… simply put, we are part of a nation that has turned far from God, in many ways, and we need to say sorry, it needs to start with us… when the prophet Isaiah comes into the presence of God, this blistering vision of God’s holiness, he famously says:

Isaiah 6:5 NIV

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

As Phil suggested last week, hopefully one good thing that can come from this pandemic, is that we are humbled enough to confess and come to God for help.

the challenge of confession

Everyone likes praying “Our Father in Heaven… your kingdom come… give us today our daily bread...” but then, “Forgive us our sins,”

It’s so hard to admit when we are in the wrong! Politicians seem to find it almost impossible to say the word, “Sorry.”

I don’t know if you’ve come across this mantra, “No regrets!” We live in a “No regrets” culture. Live with no regrets, you’re basically a good person, look to the future.

Yet 1 John 1:8 says…

1 John 1:8 NLT

8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth.

This ‘no regrets’ culture is our secular society’s attempt to forgive itself without the need to say sorry, to absolve itself without needing to confess…

Ava Sudo-Crem-Gate!

Sometimes we find it really hard to say ‘sorry’… don’t we! That’s the challenge of this call to confession… ‘Forgive us our sins...’

In our bible reading from earlier, Acts 2.22-23, Peter outlines to all the hundreds of people he’s speaking to how they are responsible, corporately and individually for the death of Jesus… it’s really interesting, because Pilate isn’t there, the soldiers that put Jesus to death aren’t there… surely many of the people there weren’t directly responsible… yet Peter says to them, v.23… “With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him.”

You see, the bible is clear that Jesus died for the sin of the whole world, past, present and future… including me, you… definitely Jared…

And you know what, the crowd don’t make excuses, our bible passage says that they were humble enough to receive the challenge to confess, it says in v.37 that they were ‘cut to the heart’… and they ask Jesus’ disciples what they should do and Peter says:

Acts 2:38 NIV

38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And we had, just last week didn’t we, the most beautiful example of this for Sophie’s baptism, this image of the forgiveness of sins, being washed away with the water.

We have to be humble enough to receive the challenge of confession.

… but also see the gift of grace that it is to us...

the gift of grace

When we see Jesus, we are cut to the heart, but we also experience God’s love for us… and so we are not left with guilt, but gratitude...

“Our greatest need and God’s greatest gift are the same thing: forgiveness of sins.”

God’s grace towards us is the most extraordinary, outrageous thing! So often we take it for granted, but Pete Greig in his book gives a great illustration, he goes back to the original word for ‘sins’, in ‘forgive us our sins’ and it’s a commercial term, for debt, so it’s like in the Lord’s prayer we are saying, “wipe the slate clean, take away our debts”...

Imagine, for those of us with a mortgage, imagine you write to your mortgage lender and say, “Dear Sir/Madame, I appear to have borrowed far more than I can afford to repay. I am writing, therefore, to ask you to erase all record of everything I currently owe. Forgive me my debts. Let’s call it quits shall we? Yours faithfully, ...”(!!)

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it!

And yet every time we say that line in the Lord’s prayer we claim something even more outrageous… and every time we say it we celebrate God’s radical, outrageous, scandalous, gift of grace. … and remember, there is always more grace in God than sin in you!

We have to be humble enough to accept the challenge of confession

We celebrate the gift of grace

Finally, the power of forgiveness...

the power of forgiveness

The Lord’s prayer continues...

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those that sin against us...

Ohhh… it doesn’t get any easier, does it, another sucker punch...

C.S. Lewis has said:

“Everyone thinks forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have to forgive, and then it gets really hard.” C.S. Lewis

Is there anyone in your life that you are still struggling to forgive?

Is there anyone in your life that you are refusing to forgive, that you feel like you can’t forgive?

It can be really hard. But Jesus says we need to forgive. This is what he models for us on the cross… ‘Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they do.’

Really important to say, by forgiving you’re not saying they get off scott free, it just means you’re giving up the right to bring them to justice… you’re letting go and leaving it to God…

But you need to forgive… for your sake… you’ve probably heard the quote:

“Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Jared has a great illustration on this too, an analogy about fish-hooks… ? You can ask him later, or he might even share it with us later, we’ll see if we have time when we pray at the end...

But let me tell you a story about the power of forgiveness that is so relevant today, Remembrance Sunday...

On this very day, at almost exactly this time, 33 years ago, on Sunday 8th November, Remembrance Sunday in 1987 the Provisional IRA exploded a bomb in Enniskillen, N.Ireland, killing 11 innocent people and injuring 64.

In the aftermath of the explosion, Gordon Wilson was lying next to his daughter under some rubble, holding her hand, and her last words to her were, “Daddy, I love you very much.”

Gordon was pulled alive from the rubble and in an astonishing interview recorded just hours after the bombing, he told the BBC, “I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not oging to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie. She’s dead. She’s in heaven and we shall meet again. I will pray for these men (who planted the bomb) tonight and every night.”

That interview echoed to the far corners of the world. Wilson’s pleas for peace and his example of forgiveness prevented reprisals and more violence and shook the IRA to its core. 10 years later, the group behind the bombing issued an unprecedented apology. This humble, broken-hearted, follower of Jesus, had from somewhere from the depths of God’s love in his own life, had summoned up the courage to extend grace and forgive his enemies...

Gordon helped break the cycle of hatred. He helped bring reconciliation. The legacy of that forgiveness is impossible to measure. One historian made this assertion: “No words in more than twenty-five years of violence in Northern Ireland had such a powerful, emotional impact.”

The power of forgiveness. “Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those that sin against us.”

It’s okay to admit you struggle to forgive, that it’s really hard… but it’s not okay to stay there…

The challenge of confession

The gift of grace

The power of forgiveness… all in this one line of the Lord’s Prayer...

coming in to land...

This grace is what reconciles the whole world to God and to one another… Peter says to that crowd in Acts that the promise of God’s forgiveness is for them and their children and all who are far from God, who he will call… he calls them to repent, receive the Holy Spirit and be reconciled to God…

This line of the Lord’s prayer could be applied to every other line of the prayer...

Our Father’s name is hallowed…as we forgive

His kingdom comes in some way… as we forgive

We are forgiven… as we forgive...

It’s powerful for us personally, as we forgive and are forgiven… and we may not all have the story of Gordon Wilson, but the ripple effects of grace can transform relationships, families, generations, communities, nations… the world.

As I said at the start, our world is bitterly divided, Democrat and Republican… left and right, black and white, rich and poor… families are breaking apart, societies are fragmenting, international alliances are ending, politics is polarising, tribalism and nationalism seem to be the order of the day, our creation is at the point of collapse … so what is the hope? Surely its prayer, and surely it’s forgiveness…

What does the world need? To repent, receive and be reconciled.

What does our society need? To repent, receive and be reconciled.

What do our families need? To repent, receive and be reconciled.

What does Jared need(!!) what do I need, what do you need? To repent, receive and be reconciled.

So… shall we pray